The Choice is Yours
by Ivvory Shadows
Summary: AxI... She yells at him, he yells at her... Will she finally give in to his offers?
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing, its characters, ideas or concepts, nor do I own or make any claims to own any terms, characters, concepts or other material copyrighted by White Wolf Publishing, Inc. Any terms and their implied meanings that are copy written to White Wolf Publishing or Black Dog games are used for flavor with no intention of challenging their ownership._

_Based on the Anime where it is alluded to that in order for a mortal to be able to be Embraced (or turned, or however you care to call it), he or she must be a virgin. (Shrugs.) Don't ask me. Timeframe is rather unimportant. Please R&R!_

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They had been bantering for about fifteen minutes, the Master and the Monster. It had been Integra's fault… her pride had once again gotten the better of her. 

"Target silenced. Replacing the restrictions of the Seals." His gravelly voice was heard before his figure coalesced before her in the dining room. It was late, and she sat there staring at a few open files.

She did not acknowledge his presence other than to ask, "Body count?"

"Twenty civilians, seven soldiers. And one piss-poor excuse for a vampire."

_Obviously not so poor, Alucard, if it took you over an hour to dispatch it. _"Damn them," she sighed in disgust, lighting a cigar. She closed the file before her with a thud.

_Ahh, but I was never taught not to play with my food… I have to take my entertainment where I can find it these nights… _"Why not take your mind off of them for a while, my master…" his voice soothed as his long figure approached the table, laying his hat and glasses beside her. She groaned inwardly and massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger… _Not this again._ "As I understand it, young ladies of your age and influence often enjoy nightly jaunts with males under full moons… and it is such a fine moon tonight…" His voice teased her with its tone, his gleaming crimson orbs cutting towards her.

"We have spoken on this subject before, Alucard. I am sure you are not so senile in your old age as to have forgotten? Very well, I will reiterate: I have not the time or inclination to tolerate such nonsense."

"Nonsense, my Master?" his voice held a mockingly puzzled tone. "To be held in the strong arms of another, to be kissed tenderly on a secret rendezvous, your body to be worshiped as the goddess you are…" his voice had risen to almost comically dramatic tones, but it now dipped down suddenly, as he leaned against he back of her chair, hovering over her shoulder, staring straight ahead, yet speaking only for her. "…to feel the passion course through you as he touches you in places no one has ever dared before…." He smirked as her grip on her cigar tightened. "Ahh… 'Nonsense'. That is not what your dreams tell me…" A tendril of his shadowy hair dared to dart out, soft and gentle as a feather to caress her cheek. She slapped it irritably away. He chuckled and stood.

"Alucard, I'm warning you. I have no patience for your games this evening." She began gathering her files, her heart racing and her pride refusing to allow him to see how his words taunted her.

"Oh, but my Master, games seem to be a favorite of your dreams…"

"ENOUGH." She said as she bangs her fist on her desk, standing, her voice holding a warning that few were stupid enough to ignore. "You have no business speaking to me in this manner. My personal life is none of your concern. I am finished with you for the evening. Go back to your basement, creature of Hell."

"Tell me, Integra," he drawled as she began to stalk from the dining room, "how does it feel to know your Organization's success, its very survival depends on this 'Creature of Hell'?"

She stopped in mid-stride, her eyes narrowed. "Tell me, Vampire, how does it feel to murder your own kind in the name of that same Organization?" She turned to regard him, her hair flowing out around her as if it had a life of its own. "Does it make you hate me? Does it make you wish you could rip me to shreds, knowing that for as long as I live, as long as the Seals exist, you will never be free? How much does it irk you to know that while they exist, you can never harm me, and never allow harm to befall me?"

His playfully mocking smirk left him. She had obviously struck a nerve, and a more cautious creature would have backed down now. She stood there however watching him, her cigar paused half-way to her lips.

He advanced; amused at the way she held her ground under what he knew was an intimidating glare.

"Yes, let us speak of your mortality," he drawled, almost menacingly. "Can you feel the bile rising in the back of your throat every time you must send me to complete a mission that your beloved Knights cannot, either because they lack the fortitude, training or cunning necessary? How much do you hate me, that every time you send a man to his death, it is I that return unscathed instead of him? And yet it is me that knows you best, that can enter your thoughts and tear at your defenses as you would permit no other to do. Is that a sick perversion of your own mind, or is it your God punishing you for using a 'Creature of Hell' to do his 'holy' deeds?" He began pacing around her like a panther stalking its prey, his deep crimson orbs burning into her soul.

"Silence." She demanded quietly, her ice blue eyes hard and cold as a diamond in the artic. As he began to circle her, she stood straighter, earning her a dark chuckle, a sound that made flesh crawl and demons quiver with fear.

He circled nearer. He knew how much it rankled every time she had to use a creature of darkness to fulfill her promise to God, Queen and Country. He knew very well the anger that rose within her every time the subject of her implied incompetence, and thus the high death toll associated with her organization, was mentioned. He knew well her defense of this, that she had to use every resource available to perform her duty… that every man knew his fate when he signed on with Hellsing, that every one of them was prepared to die for God, for Country, and for Her. He also knew what rubbish that answer really was to her.

"How does it make you feel, Integral, knowing that you will never marry for more than to just produce an heir, like a brood mare mated to the finest stallion that money can buy?" He continued to circle her, his voice dangerously low, dripping with poison and promised sin. "That when you finally climb into bed with a man, it will be no more than some bought Lord leaving a 'personal' donation in the hallowed Hellsing Halls? What does it do to you, the knowledge that every man that gets within 50 feet of you is either quaking in his boots with disgusted fear… "

"That's enough, Alucard…" she tried to interrupt, but he would not let her.

"… or filled with contempt at your dominance and power?" He was going too far, and he knew it, but he refused to let her out of this game of hers without a few scars. Not this time. He enjoyed her uncomfortable silence before he stopped, looming over her, and pinned her to the spot with his eyes. "When was your last suitor…? Age 16, 18…? I wonder…" he mused, "… if it was your _charming_ personality, or your tendency to go for your guns that finally scared them all away?"

"ENOUGH!" she demanded louder, her fury causing her to shake slightly. He had not once raised his voice, yet she felt as if he had been screaming at her. In more civil tones she announced, "This conversation is over."

She turned, and continued her path across the room and down the hallway with him dogging her every step. "It will never be over, my Master," he relentlessly continued, putting as much hate and contempt into that one word as he possibly could. "It will not be over until the day you die, cold and alone, the Royal Ice Bitch in her pristine Ivory Tower of marble and guns, having never known the loving touch of a man, having never known true happiness, other than the false, hollow joy she receives when she dispatches a vampire…"

She stopped mid-stride and turned on her heel, suddenly facing him, her nose almost touching his. Her abrupt gesture forced him to come up short, or risk bowling her over. Her posture screamed her fury, her icy eyes snapped with infinite anger. "And what would you have of me, Alucard?" she demanded hotly, her voice so strained it was almost impossible to hear, closer to the verge of tears than she had been since her fathers death. "That I become a harlot to the devil?" She threw the now-useless stub of cigar to the ground and strode into her office. Slamming the door, she flumped into her chair, and attempted to take her mind from that infuriating monster and his too-true words.

His mocking chuckle lingered as his form began to fade, his slight, appreciative smile the last thing to disappear. Even in his anger and frustration, she amused him. This time the amusement was found in the abrupt change of her direction before she had stormed off to the perceived sanctity of her office. It had mildly alarmed him, and he had half-expected to be filled with bullet holes by now. Yet another thing that made his servitude to the Hellsing house bearable… her unpredictability. Oh yes, it was the Seals that bound his will and his powers to her, but it was her ability to continually keep him amused that assured he would return to torment her night after night.

It then struck him, exactly, what her parting shot had been. This made him stop, and blink. His smile faded, to be replaced by consternation. _Surely she did not mean…_ He blinked again. _But, no, that couldn't be…_

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	2. Chapter 2

_Pt 2 of 2. Enjoy. R&R!_

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_Damned vampire! _she seethed as she flopped into her chair_He knows full well the depth of my emotions…_

...And for a moment... when she had turned and faced the enraged Demon... she had had the giddy half-thought, half-wish that he was going to kiss her...

Before she could take a breath to banish the blasphemous thought, he was there. He stood behind her chair as she tried desperately to hold back the tears of anger that threatened to spill over. _He wouldn't understand… he would think them tears of fragility… of weakness, just one more thing to disgust him about me, about being human…_

"Leave me, now." She managed aloud, her voice holding only the merest hint of a tremble.

She was stolidly still as Alucard reached his gloved hand over the looming backrest of her chair, his fingers gently stroking her silky hair. With his touch, her anger flared to almost unimaginable heights, and then just as suddenly dissipated like a morning fog under the suns warm rays. A single tear squeezed through as a single finger gently traced a line from the base of her ear down to the crook of her neck where it met her shoulder. She shivered involuntarily.

"It is your choice, Integral." He murmured softly. "It always has been, and shall always be _your_ choice." The arrogant air she had come to know as his was absent. She held a death grip on her reserve of pride and restraint, refusing to acknowledge what his touch did to her.

He sensed the fight deep within her. Meaning perhaps to make it easier for her, he placed a jaunty smile on his lips, and leaned closer, purring softly into the delicate shell of her ear, "I am ever you servant, my Master. Use me as you will... as is your right…"

Integra closed her eyes. Her heart was galloping, its beats so loud she was sure it was audible to all the world. She felt Alucard's fingers, cool beneath the fabric of his gloves, tracing a soft pattern on her warm shoulder. She knew he could feel the slight tremor that ran through her at his touch, could sense the heat that flooded through her veins at the insinuation that colored his voice. She had been Alucard's prey ever since she had freed him from his cold basement tomb; he had long awaited this moment, when her resolve was at its weakest and her indomitable will close to being shattered. She had always fancied that this would be the moment he chose to strike, to kill her and be free of her forever. It surprised her, then, his words, confused her, and perhaps lulled her into a false sense of security that had never been present in their twisted relationship before. For this moment, at least, she trusted him completely.

She stood and before she could change her mind, quickly turned to face him. Her eyes were cool, haughty, her chin at an arrogant angle, while her mind raced. His hands now at his sides, her quivering body a hairs breadth from him, he smirked. Her chest was rising with her short breaths, her heart beating a staggering staccato that was the sweetest symphony to grace his ancient ears in ages. "I sense your heart beating faster, my master..." he almost whispered, his deep, gravely voice tinged with a soft intimacy she had never heard before. "… and your blood sings to me as it courses through your veins." He sniffed the air surrounding her, as if taking in the bouquet of a fine wine. "Frightened?" he finally inquired in his usual teasing manner.

She stepped closer into him, her anger turned to longing. Her gloved fingers captured his and entwined them with her own. Her eyes did not stray from his - that would have placed her in the submissive, even on the most infinitesimal level... and that could never be allowed. "I will never be afraid of you, Alucard," she breathed defiantly against him as she wrapped his arms, her fingers still entwined with his, around her. He smiled that irritatingly knowing smle, but this time it did not bother her.

His head moved slowly, ever-so-slowly down, to place a soft kiss on her neck. She did not flinch, she did not shiver.

He chuckled, and moved ever-so-slowly to place a chaste kiss on the other side of her throat as well.

"You realize that if you do this, Alucard, you will never be able to make me like you… you are sealing my fate, to die as a human."

His hair seemed to have taken on a life of its own, caressing her hair, her cheek, and her shoulders while his hands were held captive by hers. "It is not my choice, Integra, to condemn you to anything. You condemn yourself."

_How easy it would be then,_ she mused to herself silently. _One night with him, and I would never have to agonize over his offer of immortality again. _

_Ahh, _his strong mental voice countered, slightly annoying her at his intrusion, _Yes, how easy it would be to take my one evening of comfort, to appease yourself, and leave me forever unsatisfied... to use me in that manner._

_Would not your ownership of my body satisfy you? _She demanded almost indignantly. Sure he realized that once she had done this, she would never in good conscious be able to have another man in her bed.

He chuckled darkly. "Integra my dear, pleasures of the flesh are but the tip of the iceberg, compared to the ecstasy that your immortality would bring to me."

As the pale brilliance of the night's full moon shone through her office window, his shadowy tentacles softly caressed her cheek. His infinite patience with her never once wavered, his crimson orbs never once flashed in anger, or in anticipation. It was truly her choice.

She stood up on tiptoe, and placed a soft, sweet, gentle kiss on his waiting lips. "Perhaps one evening, Alucard," she whispered softly against those lips, "I will acquiesce, to both you and to myself. But not this evening. I still relish the taste of wine, the warmth of the sun on my skin, the blue of my eyes and the frailty of my mortality too much."

She held very still, her strength of will leaving her for the moment, unable to bring her eyes to meet his. He pulled her to him in a tight embrace, full of pride and longing, protection and respect… and perhaps a twinge of the foreign concept of love. He pulled back; their fingers still entwined, and left a lingering kiss on her forehead, before vanishing softly into the night.

His voice echoed in her head, however, a sweet caressing promise. _I will wait forever for that evening, my master. You need but call my name._

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_Fin_


End file.
